Evangelist April Mason shares her testimony of surviving child sexual abuse from age five to seventeen by multiple family members. She frames the trauma as a spiritual infection and emphasizes that most perpetrators are known to victims. Mason calls survivors to break the cycle through faith and God's healing.
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Greetings everybody, my name is Evangelist April Mason and I came to talk to you today about a subject that is very, very taboo. If any of you know about my ministry, April Mason Ministries, we deal heavily with molestation and domestic violence. Today I'm going to talk to you about overcoming child molestation. I was molested from the age of 5 to 17. By my stepfather, my father, my biological father. My first instance was with my female babysitter at the age of 5. When God started showing me my path and why I was the way that I was, he had to take me back. And when he took me back, my first memorization was being 5 years old, being molested by my 2 female babysitters in the back of a big red truck. At that point, the memory started to overwhelm me because from that point on, I remember seeing my mother being beaten by her husband at the time at the age of 5, and I remember getting my belt trying to get him off of her. Now, I said that to say that generational curses are passed down. Some of the same things that I had to deal with I, my mother dealt with as well too. And a lot of times it's passed down from generation to generation. Most of the people that I counsel when it comes to molestation, it's a generational thing, but the curse has to be broken. You know, as I think about aftermath of molestation, I realize that there's so many issues that are associated with being molested. You can become promiscuous, take on homosexual behavior, low self-esteem, no self-worth. You feel like sex is the only thing that you have, and well, and sensuality. Because it's like when that spirit is attached to you, it's almost like a Microsoft software. You know, when you get Word, all Microsoft Office, you're getting Word is going to be downloaded, PowerPoint, Access, Excel, all that's going to be downloaded. By inserting that one CD. Same thing with molestation. When you're violated, that's a whole nother spirit. That's a perverted spirit. Many times your violators are people you know. It said that one out of every four girls and one out of every six boys are molested every day. 50% are molested by someone in their household. Another 40%, 40 to 50% are molested by someone they know, like a family member or close family friend, and 10% are only molested by people that they don't know. Yet what you have to understand is violators have violators. I used to get angry and used to, oh, I can't stand this one, I can't stand that one. It wasn't until God started revealing to me what I had been through that my violators have been violated as well too. I know you're like, oh, it's not an excuse. They did what they did. They could have been stopped. However, when that spirit, that perverted spirit, the spirit of perversion overtakes someone, they're not operating as themselves. It's that spirit that has taken over. Molestation is very taboo in our family. And when you start to address this issue, molestation opens up a whole other door. I deal with clients all the time that say that, "I don't want to tell, um, Evangelist. I don't want to tell because it's going to cause issues in the family." And my thing is, there's already issues in the family. Why should we continue to cover up and allow the devil to win? It's time out. It's time out for low self-esteem, low self-worth, It's time to start loving yourself, be it man or woman. Just as many men get molested as women nowadays. There are women in prison behind molesting a young boy. I counsel with young men all the time who've been molested by their babysitters or by their mothers or their stepmothers or their aunts and sisters and even teachers. It's time out. It's time to break the cycle of molestation. And you can overcome. You can overcome molestation. But the first thing you gotta do is acknowledge that something happened. So many times we go year after year, month after month, wondering why we act a certain way, why we do things a certain way, but yet we have not dealt with our issues. We bury them so far down deep that we have not dealt with them. Wonder why you can't have a great relationship. Wonder why you're married and there's certain sexual acts women— that was— women cannot do with their husband. That's not of God. Marriage and sex with your spouse is a wonderful thing, but when the enemy comes in and it's tainted It causes a whole other set of problems. It's time to release the past and embrace the future. It's time for you to say, no more will I sit and be depressed and oppressed because of what someone else done to me. No more will I give anybody control over my life because I refuse to give up. No longer. It's time out. God has some awesome and wonderful things in store for you, but you must realize first that God is your Father. He's not someone waiting to hit you over the head or make you think what happened to you is your fault. Some say, "Why would God allow this to happen to me?" I asked the same question. You know what? In the book of Job, it talks about how Satan was going to and fro looking for somebody to jack up. He was looking for somebody to jack up. And God said, have you considered my servant Job? And he's like, dude, you got a hedge of protection around him. I'm not even trying to go there. No, do whatever you want to do to him, just don't kill him. Now, I said that to say Count it a privilege and an honor when you go through trials and tribulations because that means God has that much faith in you that you will continue to seek his face in spite of. Being molested caused me to become a woman that I ended up hating. I had 3 kids by the time I was 23. I ended up turning my emotions into that of a man. I ended up treating men the way men treated women because I didn't want anybody to take anything from me again. That wasn't God. We walk around with bitterness and anger in our heart. We walk around thinking somebody owe us something, but that's not what God said. Even in spite of, we still must seek his face. Even in spite of, we must keep pushing.
